A Season to Remember Those in Need

October 12, 2008

by Daniel E. Levenson

On Yom Kippur we spend the day fasting and praying, considering past transgressions and looking ahead to the future.  For me, this day also reminds me that there are people in the world, indeed within our own towns and cities, who are in need of our help. For some of these people, a day spent in hunger is not a spiritual challenge (at least not in the same sense) but a painful reality, which is why many synagogues collect bags of food to donate to food pantries during the High Holiday season. During these difficult economic times, I think it is especially important to be aware of our good fortune and not forget those who are struggling.

In a similar vein, it occurred to me while I was helping build a sukkah today, that in constructing a temporary shelter for ourselves, in part to remember the period of wandering the Israelites endured, that we should pause and think about those who have no home of their own.  Author Herman Wouk also saw a connection between the prosperity of a society and the need to be reminded of those less fortunate. In his essay “The Autumn Feast,” Wouk writes: “For a folk settled in a rich farm country contemplating their heaping harvests, the sukkah custom may have helped to limit the smugness of prosperity. In the sukkah under the night sky, wind and rain could at any moment make life dismal. The moon shone through the loose ceiling of boughs, the old warning of the way fortune changes. The stars – the law suggests that the stars must be visible through the roof – may have been a reminder that life at its richest is brief spark in a black mystery.”

In a world in which we are often not only totally occupied with the events of our own lives, but constantly bombarded by a steady stream of information from a variety of media, it can be very easy to forget about two of the most basic things in life, food and shelter, and how even in a nation as wealthy as the United States, we still somehow fail to provide enough of either for those at the margins of society.

I would suggest that within Yom Kippur and Sukkot we have not only a reminder of powerful spiritual and historical connections with our ancestors and God, but a contemporary message that is renewed with each generation that should speak to us as well. Both of these holidays are telling us to take a look at the societies in which we live. To ask ourselves if the people around us have the basic necessities of life that we so often take for granted, and if the answer is no, we are then confronted with the challenge of what to do about it. Rabbi Israel Herbert Levinathal’s observations in his essay “The Role of the Messiah,” suggests a strong link between the observance of Sukkot and our connection to our fellow man.  Rabbi Levinthal writes “The sukkah is essentially the home of the Jew. The sukkah speaks to him in terms of his own history, his own suffering, his own problems, his own hopes. But though it is the abode of the Jew, it must possess enough of an opening to make him see the universe, to make him realize that there are people and nations outside his own, so that he must think of them and concern himself with them and their interests as well as his own.”

In the Boston area there are many organizations working to help alleviate both hunger and homelessness, including the Greater Boston Food Bank, which according to its website “…feeds more than 320,000 people annually in nine counties in eastern Massachusetts. They're poor to middle-class people who can't make ends meet. They're our friends, neighbors, and colleagues.” The Greater Boston Food Bank is part of a larger national organization called Feeding America, which is working to help end hunger across the United States. Another organization working in Massachusetts to help those in need is the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, a non-profit group dedicated to education and advocacy on issues of homelessness.

These are just a few of the many organizations working to improve the lives of others on a daily basis. Given the state of our economy, asking people to donate money to non-profits, even those which provide vital services, can be difficult, but there are other things we can do. We can pick up an extra jar of peanut butter or a package of toilet paper at the grocery store to donate to a food pantry; we can spend a day volunteering at a homeless shelter, even giving someone who’s begging by the side of the road on a hot summer day a bottle of water can make a difference. The important thing is that we do not ignore these pressing issues, or assume that someone else will take care of them for us. I believe that part of the power of the High Holidays and Sukkot is their ability to bring to us a message of hope for the coming year. Yes we live in a world in which hunger and homelessness exist, but we are not powerless to help end these problems.

On Rosh Hashanah we celebrate the new year, a time for joy and celebration, to give thanks. On Yom Kippur, to a certain extent, we withdraw within ourselves to reflect on how we have acted in the world, to think about how we can make the coming year better, and to feel for one day the marvelous strength of spirit which we all possess, but so often fail to realize. On Sukkoth we recall the period of wandering in the desert the Israelites were forced to endure, and are reminded not only of that time, but of the other exiles and experiences of homelessness that the Jewish people have suffered in the last 2,000 years. The true power of all of these days of observance lies, I believe, in the way they speak to us today, as individuals and as communities. They are reminders that as a people we too have known hunger and homelessness in our history, and we have an obligation not to ignore these evils when we see them in our own world today.

*All quotations are from The Sukkot and Simhat Torah Anthology